At this year’s February Symposium, Mr. M. W. Davis issued a rousing call for Traditionalist men and women to return to traditional, national dress as an indispensable act of counterrevolution.1 I would not gainsay Mr. Davis — indeed, I have striven since then to follow his advice — and yet, as the fateful fourteenth of July approaches, I find myself preparing to don a garment which has become traditional for me, but not yet for anyone else.

Historians debate whether they are historical fact or urban legend but, in either case, the Parisian bals des victimes2 are, to my mind, a myth for our times. The story goes that, in the wake of the French Revolutionary Terror, the bereaved relatives of those who had kissed the guillotine eschewed customary rites of mourning to hold lavish balls which only those who had so lost a relative were eligible to attend. There, dances commenced not with the usual gentle nod, but with a sharp, downward jerk of the head that imitated decapitation, while both men and women coiffured themselves à la victime — with hair longer and often curled in front, but shorn off in the back at the neckline, just as the executioners had done in order to clear the path of the blades. A variety of fanciful ensembles, often based on or incorporating mourning clothes, graced these events, but one key accessory appears time and again—a red ribbon tied around the neck at the point where a guillotine blade would fall.

The bals, it is sometimes suggested, were an invention of the royalists’ Jacobin enemies, intended to discredit them through a shocking description of hedonistic irreverence. If so, the effort was largely successful. Republican writers found in them a seemingly perfect encapsulation of aristocratic decadence, while royalists excoriated the idea of such a flagrant transgression of the old usages of mourning. Interestingly, both lines of attack have contemporary echoes in debates over the practice, which some young Israelis have embraced in transgression of Leviticus 19:28, of having the numbers of relatives who endured the concentration camps tattooed on their own arms3 — to some, a powerful tribute, to others, a macabre mockery.

Mockery, however, is a more serious thing than it is often taken to be. Every traditional society has made a space for it in some kind of Saturnalia — crowning a prince des sots to invert the natural order for a day and to whisper in the ears of the tribunes that all worldly glory is fleeting. The survivors of the Terror, however, found that the world had been turned upside down not for a day, but for what is now over two centuries. In response, they set up a prince des sots who was, at least metaphorically, a real prince, to sing through the ballrooms of Paris that the glory of one who has changed a corruptible crown for an incorruptible is deathless.4

For three hundred sixty-four days of the year, it is true what Mr. Davis says, that “We have to live as though society is correctly ordered and encourage others to follow our example.” Yet we, like Caesar in his chariot, must be careful not to deceive ourselves. This society is not correctly ordered, and lest we allow the memory of better times to tarnish, and lose the impetus behind our grand example through the remainder of the year, it behooves us to make a ritual reënactment that partakes a little of the absurdity of sotie, that we may be reminded that, just as the wisdom of the world has been made foolish, the wisdom of the ages has been made to appear so.

I trust, then, that Mr. Davis will not begrudge me the departure from tradition, and even more so from Anglo-Saxon costume, represented by one day’s donning of a crimson ribbon worn about the neck, in memory of all those martyrs whom the Orthodox Church, in its recent enthusiasm for the monarchical principle, has not yet seen fit to commemorate more fully. Perhaps, in a spirit of (if I may be pardoned the expression) fraternité, you will don one with me.

– Race MoChridhe is an academic researcher in the fields of religious and women’s studies. His writing outside academia, consisting primarily of essays and poetry in multiple languages, has been featured in The Montreal Review, the Asahi Shimbun, Feminism & Religion, and Good Words for the Young: A Children’s Devotional, among other publications. He blogs at <www.racemochridhe.com>

King Charles, his Speech, Made upon the Scaffold at Whitehall Gate, Immediately before his Execution, on Tuesday 30 January 1648, With a relation of the manner of his going to Execution – Published by Special Authority – 1649. [Care of Project Canterbury (undated upload) <anglicanhistory.org> (accessed 9 July 2017)].

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).

In a recent post for The Spectator Australia I signaled the end (perhaps prematurely) of my willingness to put up with the endless stream of disappointments issuing forth from the Trump White House:

I thought Trump was a promising step back in the direction of traditional conservatism. Anti-market fundamentalism. Anti-adventurism. Pro-nation state. And I still think that those ‘impulses’ will save the West. It mystified me that eminent trads like Roger Scruton and Peter Hitchens didn’t share my optimism. Maybe that was silly.

I can only interpret the Trump phenomenon from my own perspective, but I think… many others are frustrated that Trump didn’t stumble into their preferred worldview – if not the Burkean than the Reaganite, or the Jacksonian, or the what have you. Glancing around the room, we saw that so many Americans shared our frustrations/‘impulses’ (Trump included) and assumed they’d propose the same solutions.

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.1

Is this true of the wider ‘unaligned Right’? I sincerely wonder. Many SydneyTrad members, kindred organisations, and even the Edmund Burke Society2 were pretty gung-ho about his victory – perhaps for the same reasons I was. Some peeled themselves off the Trump Train after his airstrike on Syria; others saw the writing on the wall and decamped as soon as the Kushner faction replaced the Bannon faction as Oval Office gatekeepers.

Anyway, it reminded me of a piece by Hitchens where he laments the disappointments of Thatcherism:

I am so sorry now that I fell for the great Thatcher-Reagan promise. I can’t deny that I did. I believed all that stuff about privatisation and free trade and the unrestrained market. I think I may even have been taken in by the prophecies of a great share-owning democracy. 3

Read the whole thing, if you haven’t. It’s classic Hitchens: melancholy, romantic, and utterly uncompromising. And few traditionalists, I think, would disagree with his conclusion that Thatcher was a false messiah. A capable stateswoman, perhaps, but not a messiah.

Edmund Burke, statesman and father of Anglo conservatism.

Maybe the Trumpian moment will serve as that loss-of-innocence moment for a new generation of traditionalists. Maybe it’s inevitable that we sink into Hitchens’s signature pessimism. Come to think, Sir Roger4 and le Derb5 have both written eloquently in favour of doing just that. Perhaps we should’ve listened to them.

Shifting gears a bit: this all brings me back to the idea of dispositionalism. It’s generally used as a term of abuse in conservative circles, and came to prominence during the early days of Trumpism. It was used by more hardcore, guerrilla-types to dismiss charges that “Trump’s not a real conservative because he’s an inarticulate, ostentatious boor.” And, granted: this charge was usually levelled by disingenuous establishmentarians.

But maybe there was something to it. I’ve been pouring over the great traditionalists on the subject of Trump, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Which warning did we fail to heed? Where are the signs we ignored? Many were, come to find, dispositionalist – but not as we’ve come to expect. Just over a year ago Hitchens wrote:

I am amazed to find some conservatives enthusing about this person, who until quite recently was a keen defender of abortion, a donor to Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaigns and to the Clinton Foundation (Mrs Clinton attended Mr Trump’s Palm Beach wedding, in 2005, to his current wife, Melania, and ex-President Bill came to the reception).

Likewise, Mr Trump’s personal life, though of course his own business in the modern world, does not exactly conform to the Christian ideal which most American conservatives espouse.

So, whoever may delight in Mr Trump’s advance, I shouldn’t have thought any principled conservative could do so.6

And Sir Roger:

Three and a half centuries ago Spinoza argued that a virtuous government is not a government exercised by virtuous people, but a government that remains virtuous even when exercised by villains. I cling to my belief that Spinoza’s observation – intended as a rebuke to the Calvinist authorities of Holland – remains true of the United States of America, and that America will continue to be on the side of civilization, even with a president who doesn’t yet know what civilization means.7

Now, I realise that the SydneyTrad readership – like the unaligned Right – comprises more than just Burkean traditionalists. Many of you are, I’m sure, not overly enthused by Christian ideals and references to Spinoza. Maybe you think Hitchens and Sir Roger themselves tiresome and fusty. Alas, I can’t speak for you, nor will I try.

Roger Scruton, author and conservative philosopher.

But to those traditionalists, I do ask that perhaps we should learn from this debacle going forward. Perhaps we should take ‘dispositionalism’ a bit more seriously – only, we should hold leaders’ dispositions to our standards, not those of the media, political, and financial elites.

No doubt this will prove frustrating. Burke and Scruton (Hitchens less so) are widely invoked by “conservative” elites but seldom heeded. Burke in particular is treated dreadfully, enlisted to support causes like secularism and globalism, which he would’ve found utterly abhorrent. We’re a minority of a minority, badly misunderstood and virtually without influence.

But what’s the alternative? This?

In retrospect, Trump didn’t have to try very hard to get our support. We were, like right-wing ‘outsiders’ across the West, desperate for any leader who’d shake up ‘business as usual’. Well, that didn’t pan out. Perhaps it’s because Trump was too much of a Manhattanite. Perhaps it’s because he spent too long in the Democratic machine. Perhaps he was corrupted by Hollywood. Perhaps he wasn’t serious enough about the Christian (albeit Presbyterian8) faith he professes.

None of which is to say we should despair, as Hitchens does (and which is an entirely different beast than pessimism). Nor is it to say we should reflexively write off all politicians, or disengage from day-to-day politics. On the contrary: this is evidence of nothing if not the need for a program of applied traditionalism: a thorough critique of modern politics, including a set of reasonable and actionable solutions. We can’t relegate ourselves to theory, and outsource the praxis to men like Trump.

Peter Hitchens, writer and commentator.

There are groups in Australia poised to do just that, like SydneyTrads and the Ramsay Foundation. Britain has a few, including the Traditional Britain Group and the Cornerstone Group. None, to the best of my knowledge, exist in the United States. But that can be easily remedied.

In summary, don’t sell yourself short. Hold out for someone that adheres to our philosophy and abides by our virtues. Wait for someone who shares our instincts, not just our impulses. The Trumpian impulse – the general fed-up-ness it embodies – is important, but equally as important is how it’s acted on. Our leader should be formed by our values, not vaguely hinting at them. He should be one who’d destroy what we’d destroy, rebuild what we’d rebuild, and preserve what we’d preserve. Again, in retrospect, that decidedly wasn’t Trump.

And what if such a leader never comes along? Then we won’t be any worse off than we are now. But at least posterity might look back and say, “There were men who saw the problem clearly, and knew the way out.”

– Michael Warren Davisis a native Bostonian who has contributed essays to the Sydney Traditionalist Forum.

Charles Wooley, as you may have heard, is a clever chap. The 60 Minutes reporter has written a very clever piece in The Australian about the clever things he would’ve said to a couple of Jehovahs who knocked at his door – would’ve said, that is, if only his famed wit hadn’t failed them (alas!) at just that moment. “I am watching Manchester on the news,” he mused post facto:

“and you have come uninvited, peddling your medieval superstitions at the worst possible time. Even at the best of times I find it annoying that you insult my intelligence with nonsense you should properly keep to yourself. But presumably you are not doing this for my benefit so much as to get yourself a little higher up your imagined stairway to heaven. But at a time innocent children have just been killed by a religious maniac, I really don’t want to hear from any of you.”1

Ho-ho! You can almost see the divine flame in their eyes flickering in the gale of his superior intellect before disappearing with a low sigh, perhaps forever. What a service it would’ve been to those two poor idiots. If only he’d been able to summon all the reserves of his cleverness just a few moments sooner. Alas, alas.

It’s equal parts amazing and amusing to think that some people – especially those in the media – see absolutely no difference between these two extremisms. Never mind the fact instances of ‘Christian violence’ (the Inquisition, the Troubles, etc.) are incomparably rarer and relatively milder than Islamic ones. Never mind that they generally have nothing to do with any institutional church. Never mind that ‘Enlightened’ anti-theists like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler rank far and above Christians and Muslims combined in terms of murdering the innocent.

Set all of that aside. Mr Wooley’s argument is really, at heart, just the flip-side of the “Islam is a religion of peace; therefore, terrorists aren’t really Muslims”. One (we’ll call it the Wooley-Fry-Maher-Dawkins or ‘Anti-Theist’ school) sees all religion as inherently corrupt and apt to incline one toward violence, and so every religious person must be viewed as a suicide bomber simply waiting for orders. The other (we’ll call it the Trump2-Abbott-Obama-Cameron or ‘Death Cult’ school) sees all religion as inherently peaceful, and so a religious motivation is never accounted for when someone commits violent acts.

Yet neither can explain why, in less than a month, there have been terrorist attacks in Manchester, London, and Paris by people who claim to be Muslims… and zero, anywhere, by anyone claiming to be Christian. Both the Anti-Theists and the Death-Culters think this is a bizarre coincidence. They don’t see why they shouldn’t have claimed to be Christians or Hindus or heathens instead. Indeed, that Christians vastly outnumber Muslims in the countries that have suffered terrorist attacks just adds to the terrible mystery of the whole affair. It’s a statistical anomaly, a weird mathematical hiccup.

The Anti-Theists and the Death-Culters are both playing a long, elaborate game of hide-and-go-seek with themselves. They see the explosion, or the car mowing down pedestrians, or the cop with the hammer in his skull; they cover their eyes and giggle, “Where are the terrorists? I can’t see any terrorists! Where did they come from? Where did they all go?” It’s infantile, it’s embarrassing, and it’s costing innocent people their lives.

Now, we can ask why it is that all terrorists are Muslim. Maybe it has something to do with the Qur’an. Maybe it has to do with the centuries of economic stagnation caused by strict adherence to Sharia. Maybe it has to do with remnants of Arabia’s barbaric pre-Islamic culture. Maybe it has to do with the history of imperialism. Maybe, as Bernie Sanders claims,3 it’s the fault of climate change.

Frankly, who gives a toss? None of that – none of it – matters until we can accept the simple fact that terrorism in the 21st century West is ubiquitously Islamic. It’s a problem that exists among Muslims and virtually no one else. And that’s not some awful, logic-defying coincidence.

Yes: once we can wrap our heads around that fact, we can ask “Why?” But until then, we’re like Frenchmen watching the German armies roll through Paris, scratching their heads and muttering: “What do they want? Why are they shooting us? Is it something we did? If we give them better jobs and recognise the contributions of their culture to our rich social tapestry, will they be nice to us? Could it have anything to do with Mein Kampf? Or is it part of the Prussian militaristic spirit?” Good lord, just shoot them.

And no, it’s #NotAllMuslims – just as it wasn’t all Germans or all Japanese. But it was many Germans, and many Japanese. What’s more, it was the German and Japanese states. Forget ISIS: it’s only another, slightly (only slightly) lower tier of wilful ignorance that prevents us from admitting that many of our Arab “allies” are culpable in the global jihadist movement. Saudi Arabia is the worst offender by far.4

This really isn’t very complicated. If we weren’t so damn afraid of “Islamophobia” the war would be won already. A sustained campaign of bombing and embargoes, strenuous background checks, major immigration reductions, and mosque and internet surveillance is all it takes.

As an aside, libertarians are culpable in 100% of these failures to preserve the West, as they are 100% of the time. No one is willing to do what it takes to save our civilization from ruin at the hands of these savages. Enough of the smug Anti-Theists, the effete Dealth-Culters, and the market fetishists. We need a revival of authentic, traditionalist conservatism. The alternative is the death of everything we cherish – and a long, slow one at that.

– Michael Warren Davisis a native Bostonian who has contributed essays to the Sydney Traditionalist Forum.

The ink is still drying on my last piece of writing about the London terror attack, and before I can pick up my pen to write about the terrorist shooting in Melbourne, Australia – yet another terrorist strikes in Paris. This time, its a hammer and knife wielding madman launching upon a killing spree, he claims, for the sake of Syria.

Thankfully, he was shot in the chest by a policeman with his wits about him. It seems that the terrorist will live and enjoy the indignity of trial. Unfortunately he will be treated to the liberal democratic solution to such problems, and he will be housed with many of his co-religionists in a French prison complete with EU human rights protections. His every need, from halal biscuits with his coffee to regular haircuts, will be catered for. Even better – if he wasn’t getting enough access to extremists before, he won’t know himself after sentencing! I’d say that all his Christmases will have come at once if that meant anything to him.

Dominique Venner, author of “The Shock of History” (2015)

However, similar to the London attack, my concerns are directed inward, and away from the usual repulsion towards the perpetrators. I note that the attack occurred outside Notre Dame Cathedral. Inside were approximately one thousand worshipers. Unlike London, this death merchant didn’t manage to get a stab in before he was dropped by some righteous lead. Even so, the images that have come through to me – filtered by the media and distance – are of a chiliad of people with their hands raised in the air, poised in surrender. This is the result of a single jihadist with almost neolithic level hardware.

I can’t help but see a similar sense of helplessness in Paris as I sensed in London. Sure, I get it – could there have been more? A Shooter? A bomb? Terrorists inside? Could the lone diversity fodder (and Macron voter?) outside have been a mere diversion? Who knows. So the result is a whimpering public hoping the State gets it right. They are probably also (wisely) concerned that if they do react in any way other than submissively, they are just as likely to be killed by enthusiastic law enforcement. There’s nothing like a mop of blonde hair in a mini skirt to cause a twitchy policeman, with finely honed in diversity training, to cap off 20 rounds from the SIG pro.

I can’t help but think that these images, of a completely helpless and submissive citizenry – hoisting a white flag to its own law enforcement – do nothing but please the jihadists. I can’t help but imagine, a crescent of millions surrounding the Mediterranean, taking some measure of glee in the degree to which the boasting West, so proud of its notions of freedom and liberty, has its citizens lie cowering and confused at the hands of its protectors. I can’t help but think that many wannabe jihadists will feel inspired to strike fear and confusion into the hearts of Europeans because it seems like such an easy thing to do. Just a few implements from the garage and a catch-phrase, and you’re in business.

Jean Raspail, author of “Camp of the Saints” (1976)

The best bit of course is – if you get caught, you get sent to a training camp with a better room than you have at home, and even if you get shot trying, the medical care is free and first rate. You don’t have to worry about the legal fees to defend yourself at trial (unlike people charged with hate speech) – and the programmes on offer for you upon release. As long as you don’t want to travel to the US, the penalties aren’t too bad. Who cares anyway – its all those virgins in the afterlife that’s the real prize – it always was a one-way trip. Best of all, if any of those irritating GalloFrankish Frenchmen dare to cast aspersions upon your family, friends or co-religionists, they run the risk of sharing the cell block with you.

It would seem that Dominique Venner is quite the poet. His final penned words prior to his version of seppuku warned of a French demographic replacement by Islamics and an imposition of Sharia Law. This ‘ISIS inspired’ Algerian student may have felt obliged to honour Venner’s prophecy. he could see it – why can’t anyone else? Is the only wise professor the one in Raspail’s pages? I note that he didn’t go quietly.

I can only shudder with the thoughts of how a kind of anarcho-tyranny is set to intensify as matters heat up. I can’t see the jihadists being put off. That means these sorts of attacks will continue and get worse. The authorities don’t know what to do. The are terrified of antagonising the enemy within and bringing matters to a head. Unfortunately, like an over-due birth, sometimes you have to bring matters on to deal with them properly and for the safety of all involved.

Until the political classes start addressing issues of demographics and immigration, they are just grand-standing and carrying the election in their heart – not your welfare.

Dominique Venner didn’t commit suicide – he just performed a literal demonstration of what the culture was doing around him.

– Luke Torrisiis a retired legal practitioner and now an academic researcher and host of Carpe Dieum, Sydney’s only explicitly Traditionalist and Paleoconservative radio programme on 88.9FM, between 8:00 to 10:00pm, Mondays.

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).

I have been conditioned by the world of fiction to regard London as an impregnable fortress. In Skyfall, MI6 could be blown up by terrorists yet keep on working from its underground alternate headquarters, with “M” and “Q” safe and well. Despite its title, in London Has Fallen, with heads of state dropping like flies, the terrorists infiltrating the highest levels of security (three cheers for diversity programmes!), and international terror masterminds owning whole buildings necessary for the take-over plan to function (now that is just wild fantasy fiction isn’t it?) – the good guys prevail (with a little American help).

To get to the stage where you have a militarised police filtering the population with detailed searches, ‘hand-on-heads’ type containment of ‘innocents’ with the appearance of martial law, one must turn to 28 Weeks Later. In that doomsday classic, the UK has undergone a literal ‘zombie apocalypse’ scenario at the hands of the Rage Virus. Even then, London is still the safe haven – albeit militarised – for all the non-flesh-eaters who want a break from the incessant running.

As it turns out, fact is stranger than fiction. All it took for the zombie apocalypse was three Islamics in a van, armed with knives. We’ve all been saturated with the details and statistics of the carnage, we’ve all been subjected to overdoses of the predictable hand-wringing by the political classes and elites, we’ve all seen the news turning a handful of interviews into hours of coverage to the point where we can lip-synch the dialogue. Of all the approved media coverage, the images that sit most starkly in my mind aren’t the ones of people sitting by the curb holding bloodied cloth to their cuts and slashes. I am struck by the actions of police.

British authorities’ message to its citizens: run, hide and inform.

We were assured after Manchester that the police presence would be truly awesome – they couldn’t guarantee another attack wouldn’t happen, but the public was to be reassured by the show of force. We were told after London Bridge, that within 8 minutes all the terrorists were shot. There was carnage all the same. What I noticed was an unprecedented level of aggression from police towards the general public. People were being ordered to cower under tables – under threat of police action. At one point I saw film of police getting very aggressive with those they termed ‘gawkers’ – not gawking at dead bodies – just wanting to understand the mayhem. Then I saw pictures of Londoners being sent down streets with their hands on their heads as if in a state of martial law.

I understand that in the chaos police didn’t know if they had apprehended all the culprits, that they didn’t know if more attacks were planned, that they had reason to fear that the knife attackers also carried explosives. I understand all of that. However, truth be told – what I saw (not being there of course, and having to appreciate the situation via media reports) was a police force cracking down on its own civilians with a militaristic zeal because it didn’t know what else to do.

I was especially touched by one account from a man who witnessed a girl being stabbed multiple times. He wanted to help her, he looked for a weapon, a chair or table – but everything was ‘bolted down’ and he felt totally helpless. The constant refrain from witnesses was ‘helpless’. The terrorists walked into bars and restaurants and just started stabbing. Some reported throwing pint glasses at the attackers, but despite outnumbering them hundreds to one, despite being attacked with only blades, the public felt helpless and the injury toll mounted. It was police bullets that ended the fray – I can only imagine the toll had the terror had been allowed to carry on for a few more minutes.

Again, truth be told, I can’t imagine three Englishmen walking through Beirut, Baghdad, Tehran or even Constantinople on a stabbing spree and getting very far. In fact, I can’t imagine them even engaging in a swearing fit or ‘racist tirade’ in such cities and avoiding hospitalisation. I imagine that the average Briton would be terrified of standing up in a cafe in Cairo and bellowing obscenities about Mohammed – they would genuinely fear for their very lives. I imagine that an Egyptian Muslim standing up in a London bar and swearing obscenities about Her Majesty or Christ or the English generally, would be met with a stunned silence, a cluster of filming smart phones, perhaps – in the right area – even agreement and applause.

I am not suggesting here that: I’d prefer London be more like a Middle Eastern city, that the English are weak, that the London attack lacked the presence of local heroes or even that I’d fare any better in the same position as most of the witnesses. All I note is that for some reason, which I won’t be attempting to analyse or even diagnose here, the average Englishman feels helpless in ways that I (and most of you if you’ll be honest with yourselves) don’t see in many other parts of the world. He feels helpless in ways that we can’t imagine our fathers or grand-fathers feeling helpless. This is all very anecdotal, somewhat emotional, and perhaps even tinged with idealism and nostalgia – but instinctively, we all know there’s something to it. This idea that I am grasping at like a blind man in fog is the same one many others know is out there and are challenged to describe too.

When I see the reaction of the police and security forces towards the English people, all I see is the underscoring of this sense of helplessness. I recall the words of Roger Scuton, who writes in his ‘eulogy’ for England:

“The police force was not an arm of the central government, but a local organisation, responsive to the county councils. The ‘bobby’ himself was trained as a friend of the community he served, and the sign of this was that he was armed only with a notebook and a comic tin whistle. he knew the people on his beat, and took a benign and paternal interest in their welfare. Children went to him when they were lost; strangers asked him directions, and everybody greeted him with a smile.”1

Roger Scruton, conservative English philosopher and author.

Earlier, Scruton notes that:

“[w]hen a felon transgressed it was not the state but the law which pursued him, and the essential goodness of the law was symbolised by the fact that policemen carried no arms. Policemen were chosen for their height, with hats that emphasised their superior stature. But they were representatives of authority, not power – the authority of a law that stood above all earthly powers and could never be reduced by them. In popular films the police confronted gun toting criminals with the same phlegmatic confidence as radiated from those idealised schoolroom portraits of General Gordon of Khartoum, in which the General faced the spears of savages with a calm acceptance of his fate, as safe and unflustered in death as he would have been on the thickly carpeted stairwell of his London club, conscious that his authority was only enhanced by his lack of power and that one day, thanks to his quiet sacrifice, order would be reimposed.”2

I am not sure I see either of these images when I scrutinise those I receive filtered through the media. It would seem that a generation of diversity programmes, heterogenising of community and state centralisation, has produced a different effect. The image of General Gordon remains apt – because now it would appear that the Mahdi’s troops are on the rampage.

I can’t help but think that the response to theses attacks; pink balloons, flowers and candle vigils, and a rock concert – won’t be the magic panacea everyone is hoping for. Rather it will entrench whatever this phenomenon is that is turning the stiff upper lip into a quivering one. The Englishman is increasingly looking confused and helpless, he is looking brow-beaten by those the State assigns to protect him, he is looking the way I imagine the souls of Airstrip One to look.

What frightens me the most, outside of the immediate carnage, is the erasure I detect of the quintessentially English character that I know and love. It flows within my veins, it is the stuff of my ancestry. I do not want to become an eccentric repository of it because I am cast to the antipodes, shielded by the prophylaxis of distance.

Just because the buildings still stand, it doesn’t mean that London hasn’t fallen. She is truly slain when General Gordon sits rocking on the third step, weeping and confused, not knowing what to do.

– Luke Torrisiis a retired legal practitioner and now an academic researcher and host of Carpe Dieum, Sydney’s only explicitly Traditionalist and Paleoconservative radio programme on 88.9FM, between 8:00 to 10:00pm, Mondays.

Endnotes:

Roger Scruton, England: An Elegy (London: Pimlico, 2001) pp. 120-121.

Ibid. at p. 56.

Post Scriptum:

Since writing this earlier today – the news headlines (here at least) run with ‘heroes emerge from the London terror attack’ and it just convinces me more than Scruton’s Eulogy is wise. There was a police officer who took on all three terrorists with just a baton – and was wounded extensively. He actually is a hero. Unfortunately the word is being abused when applied to many others. There was a Romanian baker who clobbered one of them with a basket – that takes a fair bit of guts and genuine bravery – but again, the twitter-verse comes alive as he is exalted as a ‘migrant hero’ who might be thrown out because of Brexit! As for those who are heroes because they called out to warn people, gave someone a bandage, asked a person if they were okay … that just shows a deformed view of what a hero actually is. I note one ‘hero’ applied a tourniquet to a person caught by a bullet in the crossfire … seems that the wounded weren’t all victims of terrorists. – L.T., 4:05pm.

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).

]]>https://sydneytrads.com/2017/06/05/luke-torrisi-13/feed/9London Terror Attack anarchotyrannysydneytradsGuest Video, “The End Game: Why the West is Lost”https://sydneytrads.com/2017/05/13/end-game-west-is-lost/
https://sydneytrads.com/2017/05/13/end-game-west-is-lost/#commentsSat, 13 May 2017 07:12:35 +0000http://sydneytrads.com/?p=9744Continue reading →]]>Today’s Guest Video is by the Black Pigeon, titled “The End Game: Why the West is Lost”. The seventeen minute presentation is a summation of a private exchange the Black Pigeon had with another pseudonymous blogger “Renegade Funk”. The Black Pigeon starts by noting that it was in the West that non-dictatorial systems of governance were pioneered, meaning that the rule of law trumped autocratic will, at least in principle. It is argued that the primacy of the rule of law usurped tribal allegiance and over time became secular, which lead to individual rights and the dethroning of religion as a governing authority over the lives of citizens in the public square. The subsequent development of liberalism lead to representative forms of governance, whose dominant ideological framework became increasingly progressive. Ultimately, the progressive hegemony’s praxis of deconstruction would turn on itself after the complete abolition of the ancien régime – which is the stage of historical evolution we presently occupy. Referring to Nicholas Wade, particularly his A Troublesome Inheritance, it is further argued that we can observe a substantial decline in civilisation determining factors such as intelligence.

In fairness, the Black Pigeon does emphasis that this process also saw the disappearance of the savagery that marked the more barbarous characteristics of Roman life and generally paved the way to the preeminence of more civil and chivalrous values. Violence too, was “outsourced to the state” after the consolidation of the kingdom and the republican nation-state. Essentially the momentum behind the process continued to the development of the welfare state after the concepts of inherent human dignity translated and morphed into atomistic hyper egalitarianism. Thus the rise of the present doctrine of corrosive liberal progressivism, and the “anti-in-group preference”. The rest of the video illustrates the concrete impact this process has had on Western civilisation: its moral norms, absurd ideas concerning gender, sex and ethnic identity, the economic order, its immigration policies, and whatever notions of collective national identity remain.

Interestingly, the Black Pigeon also provides some much needed critical commentary on the contemporary reaction to these trends, particularly among identitarians, European nationalists, and others. “What is needed is a complete paradigm shift if the West is to survive in any recognizable form” he argues, “it is hard to say how people will react when they become minorities in their own countries across the entire Western world by mid to late century if things don’t change, but the answer is simple. For the West to survive, its people have to give up universalism and understand that they do have an in-group and that group does have interests, just as all other groups do.” Watch the video here:

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).

]]>https://sydneytrads.com/2017/05/13/end-game-west-is-lost/feed/2The End Game - Why the West is LostsydneytradsEqual & Opposite – Catholic and Traditionalist Realignment in Australian Politics?https://sydneytrads.com/2017/05/06/m-w-davis-10/
https://sydneytrads.com/2017/05/06/m-w-davis-10/#commentsSat, 06 May 2017 12:12:08 +0000http://sydneytrads.com/?p=9734Continue reading →]]>

Senator Cory Bernardi of South Australia, founder of Australian Conservatives.

In 2015, STF published its first symposium. The theme: ‘Quo Vadis Conservatism; or, Do Traditionalists have a Place in the Current Party Political System?’1 Some of its contributors agreed that, despite its manifold weaknesses (Malcolm Turnbull’s coup against Tony Abbott was still freshly smarting), we could do no better than to hold our noses and vote Coalition as we always have.

I wonder if the consensus would stand today. For the first time in recent memory, the orthodox Right has not two, but three viable choices. Many nationalists will throw in with One Nation; meanwhile. More Tory- and religiously-minded voters will cast their lot with the Australian Conservatives. And there’s a compelling case to be made that the Libs and Nats remain the best of a pretty good lot, particularly if one doesn’t live in Queensland or South Australia. It should be said, though, that voting for the Coalition is unlikely to shed that nose-holding quality. That’s simply the nature of a broad church. The cost of building a governing majority is rendering it impossible for any single voter to toe the entire party line. More often than not, that line contradicts itself from one branch to the next. Case in point: the de facto Liberal position on the monarchy isn’t the same in Warringah as it is in Wentworth.

Yet, gracious as some of the Australian symposium contributors were in standing by Turnbull back in 2015, the favour hasn’t been returned. As Gerard Henderson observed in The Australian:

The decision by the Liberal Party governments in Canberra and Victoria a half-century ago to help fund the Catholic school system was a factor in the move of some traditional Labor voters to the Coalition […]

The Prime Minister’s education changes, announced with little warning on Wednesday, have the potential to disrupt what has become an essentially bipartisan approach to school funding. Moreover, the policy appears to interfere with the autonomy of the Catholic education system as ­administered in the various archdioceses and dioceses throughout Australia and guaranteed by ­recent Coalition and Labor administrations.2

The PM couldn’t have chosen a worse time. While Catholics are by no means unanimous Liberal voters, and while the ‘Catholic Right’ faction has never dominated the party room, their loyalty has been repeatedly tested since Turnbull’s coup. Both the pro-market Bernardites and the smaller Santamariaist elements of the faction were strong Abbott supporters. And Senator Bernardi’s defection made a mass exodus all but inevitable. If just one prominent Lib or Nat from another state (Christensen? Abetz?) had followed him, we could’ve reasonably expected the Coalition to collapse entirely.

Why, then, would Turnbull risk this critical and already-anxious demographic? Of course, despite the fact that the PM is himself Catholic, we know well enough that his faith doesn’t drive his politics. He’s a secularist and a free-marketeer at bottom. Is he repeating his 2009 attempt at political suicide, putting his own agenda before party unity? Is he proving once again that he doesn’t have the wherewithal to lead a broad church?

Now, we should take seriously the fact – it is a fact – that Australia is better under Turnbull than it would be under Shorten, if marginally. But never in the history of the Liberal Party have conservative leaders so thoroughly alienated the centrists. It’s always the other way around, here under Turnbull as it was under Fraser. And we all know the reason why: liberals and progressives will gladly walk if they feel they aren’t being sufficiently pandered to. The brief life of the Australian Democrats was enough to teach Coalition bosses that moderates are crucial to their governing majorities. Conservatives? We just take it on the chin.

Enough may finally be enough. Dissident Rightists could finally to resolve to break with the Coalition and pursue their own interests. If they take refuge with the AusCons and One Nation in the next election and cost the Liberals the election, that will be the end of the party of Menzies. A new coalition of traditionalists, nationalists, and agrarians will coalesce around the corpse of the Turnbull government.

Unless PM wants to go down as the man who destroyed the Liberal Party, he’d better start kissing some popish behind. His meeting with President Trump might give confidence to some nationalists, but traditionalist voters don’t have an equivalent figure for the PM to schmooze. We’ll hold out for results – some proof that the centrist leadership doesn’t agree with Mark Textor’s infamous claim that, “The qualitative evidence is [we] don’t matter.”3 It’d be a shame if we had to prove them wrong.

Still, that may not be enough to save the ol’ “broad church”. Even in those countries where populists have triumphed over the establishment, it remains to be seen whether Humpty can be put back together again. With the liberal Kushnerites threatening to edge out the Bannonites in Trump’s White House,4 and the French Right split (perhaps irreconcilably) between Fillon’s conservatives and Le Pen’s nationalists,5 the great realignment is ongoing. This is a very, very big fire Turnbull is playing with – one that’s threatening to consume the entire Western world. He can’t put it out by himself, of course, though I can’t for the life of me work out why he’d choose to stoke it.

– Michael Warren Davisis a native Bostonian who has contributed essays to the Sydney Traditionalist Forum.

Secular and “LGBT” “protesters” mock and spit on pilgrims to World Youth Day, Madrid 2011.

Every Sabbath, Christians in the Middle East face the too-real possibility of martyrdom. As they wash their face in the morning, they catch themselves in the mirror and ask, am I prepared to die for Christ today? If not, they stay home. Most go anyway.

Thank God the situation isn’t so dire in the West. But as we continue to descend into militant secularism, that may be coming to an end. The Remnant carried a harrowing report last week about a Brazilian priest, Father Anderson Batista da Silva, who was charged with assault for defending the Eucharist from a would-be defiler. “The [Latin] Mass had already begun when a man in his sixties entered the church and, from the outset, started to complain, out loud, about several issues (the rite, its duration, the Gregorian chant, etc.), thus, bothering those around him,” the report says.1

​At Communion, the man demanded to receive the Sacrament in the hand rather than on the tongue, which is customary in the Extraordinary Form. Father Batista eventually relented, but the man didn’t consume the Host. Instead, he walked away with the sacred matter still in his hands, saying “the Host did not belong to the priest and that he had the right to make his Communion wherever he wanted” – and, further, “that this was not his religion and that this old Mass did not exist.” Nearby parishioners informed the man that he would not be allowed to leave with the consecrated Host, which can be desecrated – a very real concern in this depraved age.2 A brief altercation broke out as the parishioners tried to retrieve the Sacrament, which resulted in it being crushed and scattered on the floor… and Father Batista being charged with assault.

Now, there was a time when this would’ve been unthinkable, especially in a Catholic nation like Brazil. While defiling the Eucharist may not be against the law, the use of moderate force in its defense wouldn’t have been, either. No police officer or magistrate in their right mind would say a priest should be prosecuted for protecting the incarnate person of his God… at least as he sees it. Granted, it’s all a bit nebulous, legally-speaking. But that, too, has its virtue. In a healthy society, there isn’t a law regulating (or de-regulating) absolutely every facet of our lives. Some things are simply too great to fall under man’s measly authority.

Not so, it appears. And the Church in Australia is also facing persecution if she remains faithful to her practices, only here in regard to Reconciliation. In the wake of the clerical sex abuse investigations – which every faithful Catholic must find truly horrifying – there are calls for Australia to cease respecting the Seal of the Confessional.3 Julia Gillard is among them. “It’s not good enough for people to engage in sin of omission and not act when a child is at risk,” said in 2012, at the beginning of the Royal Commission. One victim referred to it a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for paedophile priests,4 which of course it isn’t. The Seal of the Confessional doesn’t absolve abusers of legal – or even necessarily moral – culpability. It merely prevents authorities from prosecuting innocent priests who hear these abusers’ confessions and can’t report them, for love of God’s sacraments and fear for their immortal soul.

“In a society that supposedly upholds freedom of religion, the notion of the state compelling any Catholic priest to break the seal of confession over any penitent’s sin, including clerical child sex abuse, would be intolerable. It would smack of the mindset behind the religious repressions of the Soviet Union, the Chinese communists and Henry VIII and Elizabeth I as they drove the Catholic faith underground.”5

Which isn’t exactly true. Let’s face it: as far as the law is concerned, there’s no good reason why confessors should be exempt from charges of ‘concealing serious indictable offence’. We should be clear that what we’re asking for isn’t equality, it’s a legal privilege.

But it’s not a privilege for Catholics or confessors. It’s certainly not a privilege for pedophiles. No: it’s a privilege for God and His Church. We’re asking that the authorities of this earth humble themselves and then take stock of their authority, which may be great, but is by no means absolute. The powers that be are ordained of God, Scripture tells us; yet God gives none of them power to modify the sacraments. Not Henry VIII, not Xi Jinping, and not Julia Gillard.

This might just be so much spitting into the wind. Pleas for our political class to respect the sacraments may be slightly less effective than a ‘Keep Off the Grass’ sign in a cow pasture. If so, what a small, sad world this is become. Man is a fundamentally spiritual being; if the law refuses to acknowledge that fact, it’s already – quite literally – inhumane. All that’s left to do is round up those 99.9% of confessors who refuse to break the seal and throw them in jail for complicity. Hopefully Father Batista gets his too, no? What a proud moment that will be for Ms. Gillard, when the City of Man at last occupies the City of God, strikes its banners and exiles its Prince.

– Michael Warren Davisis a native Bostonian who has contributed essays to the Sydney Traditionalist Forum. He tweets at @KermitLaphroaig